Shailendra Singh(II)
- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Shailendra Singh has spent four decades building businesses at the intersection of advertising, sport, music and film - first as an ad man, then a producer, now an author and filmmaker in his own right.
He left a career as a professional cricketer in England in 1987 to join his elder brother Harindra at Percept Advertising, then a three-year-old agency. Within a decade Percept had become India's leading homegrown communications group, producing and selling over 4,000 ad campaigns for clients including Hero Honda, Toyota, Bharti and Sahara - Singh personally coined "Bharat hai humara, hum hai Sahara" and "Proud to be Indian, Proud to be Bharti," two of the campaigns still cited as touchstones of Indian advertising. In 1994 he launched Percept D'Mark, the group's sports marketing arm, and brokered the 100 crore inr B.C.C.I. -Sahara sponsorship of the Indian cricket team - India's first and largest sports sponsorship deal at the time.
In 1999, after producing over 2,000 ad films without landing a shot as a movie producer, Singh made his own: Pyaar Mein Kabhi Kabhi, financed through Tyger Productions, which he rechristened Percept Picture Company in 2004. Over the following 28 years the studio produced and released 72 feature films, winning National Film Awards for Best Child Artist (Makdee, 2003), Best Film, Screenplay and Editing (Page 3, 2005) and Best Feature Film (Kanchivaram, 2009, shared with Priyadarshan) - the last also earning a Special Presentation and the International Critics' Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2005 he produced Hanuman, India's first full-length indigenous animation feature, jump-starting the country's animation industry. Filmfare named him the 12th Most Powerful Player in Bollywood in 2008.
In 2007 Singh founded Sunburn Goa, India's first home-grown dance music festival. By 2014 the IMS Business Report's Asia-Pacific edition rated it "as big as Tomorrowland & Ultra Miami," and inthemix named Singh to The 50 Most Powerful People in EDM (2013) - the only Indian ever included. He published his first book, F?@k Knows, in 2013; it hit #1 on Crossword's bestseller list within 30 days and #1 National Bestseller in Non-Fiction on the HT-Nielsen Bookscan within 45, followed by The True Story of Sunburn. In 2015 he founded Guestlist4Good, pairing large-scale live entertainment with charitable fundraising for underprivileged children's education.
Singh's current chapter is a shift from financing other people's stories to telling his own. In 2026 he published two books - Self Help = Help Self (Rupa Publications) and The Perception Game (HarperCollins) - and wrote and directed Ladoo, a black-and-white Marathi drama. Its screening was hosted by Riteish Deshmukh and Genelia D'Souza, with National Award-winning filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, Kabir Bedi, Rohit Roy, Sudhanshu Pandey, Yashpal Sharma and Sachin Pilgaonkar among those in attendance. A separate public screening in Karjat, hometown of the film's lead actor, drew a standing ovation. Singh is now in development on his next feature, due in 2027, continuing his move from producer and Inceptor to filmmaker and author in his own right.
He left a career as a professional cricketer in England in 1987 to join his elder brother Harindra at Percept Advertising, then a three-year-old agency. Within a decade Percept had become India's leading homegrown communications group, producing and selling over 4,000 ad campaigns for clients including Hero Honda, Toyota, Bharti and Sahara - Singh personally coined "Bharat hai humara, hum hai Sahara" and "Proud to be Indian, Proud to be Bharti," two of the campaigns still cited as touchstones of Indian advertising. In 1994 he launched Percept D'Mark, the group's sports marketing arm, and brokered the 100 crore inr B.C.C.I. -Sahara sponsorship of the Indian cricket team - India's first and largest sports sponsorship deal at the time.
In 1999, after producing over 2,000 ad films without landing a shot as a movie producer, Singh made his own: Pyaar Mein Kabhi Kabhi, financed through Tyger Productions, which he rechristened Percept Picture Company in 2004. Over the following 28 years the studio produced and released 72 feature films, winning National Film Awards for Best Child Artist (Makdee, 2003), Best Film, Screenplay and Editing (Page 3, 2005) and Best Feature Film (Kanchivaram, 2009, shared with Priyadarshan) - the last also earning a Special Presentation and the International Critics' Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2005 he produced Hanuman, India's first full-length indigenous animation feature, jump-starting the country's animation industry. Filmfare named him the 12th Most Powerful Player in Bollywood in 2008.
In 2007 Singh founded Sunburn Goa, India's first home-grown dance music festival. By 2014 the IMS Business Report's Asia-Pacific edition rated it "as big as Tomorrowland & Ultra Miami," and inthemix named Singh to The 50 Most Powerful People in EDM (2013) - the only Indian ever included. He published his first book, F?@k Knows, in 2013; it hit #1 on Crossword's bestseller list within 30 days and #1 National Bestseller in Non-Fiction on the HT-Nielsen Bookscan within 45, followed by The True Story of Sunburn. In 2015 he founded Guestlist4Good, pairing large-scale live entertainment with charitable fundraising for underprivileged children's education.
Singh's current chapter is a shift from financing other people's stories to telling his own. In 2026 he published two books - Self Help = Help Self (Rupa Publications) and The Perception Game (HarperCollins) - and wrote and directed Ladoo, a black-and-white Marathi drama. Its screening was hosted by Riteish Deshmukh and Genelia D'Souza, with National Award-winning filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, Kabir Bedi, Rohit Roy, Sudhanshu Pandey, Yashpal Sharma and Sachin Pilgaonkar among those in attendance. A separate public screening in Karjat, hometown of the film's lead actor, drew a standing ovation. Singh is now in development on his next feature, due in 2027, continuing his move from producer and Inceptor to filmmaker and author in his own right.
